Our Impact

We measure our impact by the engagement of our diverse community, the quality and number of Lark-affiliated plays that have moved into the repertoire through production and the influence of our playwrights on cultural conversations locally, nationally and globally.

Playwrights know us as a safe and empowering space to lead their own creative processes and engage with their communities. Audiences recognize our success in giving both established and underrepresented voices a platform to raise uncomfortable questions and provoke conversations about social change.

Our Numbers

Last season The Lark served 813 artists, including 95 playwrights. We reviewed 992 plays through our open access program; partnered with over a dozen theaters and universities and welcomed 2,016 audience members to 31 public presentations. We maintain 100% of our programs free of charge to artists and audience alike.

Our Plays

In the past five years 194Lark-developed plays moved on to 450 presentations around the world and were seen by 1,165,962 audience members. Examples of plays substantially developed at the Lark include Kimber Lee’s brownsville song, (b-side for tray), David Henry Hwang’s Chinglish, Mona Mansour’s The Way West, Dominique Morisseau's Skeleton Crew, Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop, Samuel Hunter’s The Whale and Rajiv Joseph’s Guards at the Taj.

Our Artists

“The Lark is the only place I know that is truly artist-driven, and that’s why it’s so important to the American theater right now.”

— David Henry Hwang

“Over the years, I have been told by many producers that I would need to change certain things in my plays if I wanted mainstream theaters to present them, but The Lark only embraced me and told me to write my own truth. The Lark helped me to be brave and just do my work. It can do the same thing for other writers, too.”

— Katori Hall

"The Lark helped restore my faith in my own work by bringing their uniquely transformative blend of rigor and joy to the development of eight of my plays. But they've also given me something larger than that: a restored faith in theatre itself. From their little perch on 43rd and 8th, the Lark's diverse and growing creative community sends forth ripples of hope that that really do change the world.”

— Gus Schulenburg

“No one takes you under their wing like the Lark.”

— Marcus Gardley

Production Photo Credits

photo 2: the LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater production of Brownsville Song (b-side for tray)
photographer: Erin Baiano

​photo 5: the Marin Theatre Company production of The Way West
photographer: Kevin Berne

Photo 7: the Marin Theatre Company production of The Whale
photographer: Kevin Berne